ABSTRACT
Eia Asen developed multi-family-therapy (MFT) in the context of pediatric psychiatric work with predominantly poor and marginalised families from very different cultural, religious, linguistic, and social traditions in inner-city London. This work began with families affected by globalisation, migration, segregation, criminality, and other adverse social and economic effects of Thatcherism. Asen replaced the expert-led diagnostics, patterns of illness and individual medical indication of the case-by-case based model of treatment with a systemic practice developed across decades together with a large multi-professional and multicultural team, which places the family, the social, economic, and educational contexts, as well as traditions and the every-day situations of children and their parents, at the centre of the support. MFT makes particular use of the mutual solidarity, willingness to help and competence of families in comparable situations. The article describes how the child-guidance service has transferred this concept of multi-family training to the outpatient (non-residential) educational support work of the Youth Welfare Department of Ludwigshafen, a medium-sized city with above average social risks. The successes of this pilot project across two-and-a-half years are encouraging and suggest the further development and expansion of this approach.
Subject(s)
Child Behavior Disorders/therapy , Child Guidance/methods , Education/methods , Family Therapy/methods , Family Therapy/organization & administration , Learning Disabilities/therapy , Psychotherapy, Group/methods , Psychotherapy, Group/organization & administration , Self-Help Groups , Child , Child Behavior Disorders/diagnosis , Child Behavior Disorders/psychology , Cooperative Behavior , Cultural Diversity , Emigrants and Immigrants/psychology , Germany , Humans , Interdisciplinary Communication , Learning Disabilities/diagnosis , Learning Disabilities/psychology , Parent-Child Relations , Poverty/psychology , Power, Psychological , Social StigmaABSTRACT
To work with adolescents and their contexts usually means to face certain problems: Parents or teacher want the adolescent to do a counselling or a therapy, the adolescent is not motivated or does not have much of an idea what this means. The problem often causes conflicts between the adolescent and the persons of his context. Typical conflict communication develops that blocks good solution-finding and constructive developments and usually is re-enacted in the therapeutic or counselling session. The systemic methods presented are useful to block dysfunctional conflict communications. In a conflict-ridden situation, the members of the family usually try to form coalitions with the professional or at least try to find out witch party the counsellor might join. To avoid traps like these and enhance productive change there are a number of very useful methods developed or adapted by the authors. The use of these special methods in the communication with the adolescent or the adolescent and his system is discussed in the article. The Authors also describe which attitudes are useful in the role of a counsellor or a therapist.
